Chinese pollution is everyone's problem

A couple wearing protective masks poses for a self portrait in thick haze on Tiananmen Square in Beijing Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2013. Extremely high pollution levels shrouded eastern China for the second time in about two weeks Tuesday, forcing airlines in Beijing and elsewhere to cancel flights because

/ AP

A couple wearing protective masks poses for a self portrait in thick haze on Tiananmen Square in Beijing Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2013. Extremely high pollution levels shrouded eastern China for the second time in about two weeks Tuesday, forcing airlines in Beijing and elsewhere to cancel flights because of poor visibility and prompting government warnings for residents to stay indoors. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

A couple wearing protective masks poses for a self portrait in thick haze on Tiananmen Square in Beijing Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2013. Extremely high pollution levels shrouded eastern China for the second time in about two weeks Tuesday, forcing airlines in Beijing and elsewhere to cancel flights because of poor visibility and prompting government warnings for residents to stay indoors. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) (/ AP)

About 20 percent of the world’s population will be celebrating this weekend, welcoming in a new year with dancing dragons and fireworks.

Happy New Year, China.

You’ve wheezed and hacked your way through another click on the calendar. But instead of calling it the Year of the Black Snake maybe it should be the Year of the Black Lung, because that’s what many more of you will have if you keep this up. You’re making this world a very dirty place and we’d like you to please stop.

In news that should surprise no one, the Chinese government admitted two weeks ago that its air pollution had reached hazardous levels. The bigger shock is that they bothered to announce it all. Until now the government there has never acknowledged that it has a problem.

And yet its air pollution is very well-known. It was the most striking thing I noticed in two visits there. The sky was a constant brown and the street lights were shrouded in a persistent, dense fog. Honestly, it’s like sitting in a giant hookah lounge.

It’s the price they’re paying for progress. While we in the West admire their economic development, we often overlook that China is also causing potential respiratory harm, not only to its own 1.3 billion people but also to the rest of the world.

Although Beijing is 6,200 miles away, it’s conceivable that its air pollution could have some effect on the air quality here in California. Things blow around; it’s just the way the atmosphere works.

“I think the answer to that is yes, it does have an effect, but it would probably be a fairly small contribution,” said Sam Atwood, media relations director for the South Coast Air Quality Management District. His district monitors the air in this area. His counterpart in the eastern part of the county said basically the same thing.

“Two years ago when there was concern that radioactivity from Japan would show up in California it never materialized,” said Violette Roberts. “There was nothing of significance and it’s believed that most of it was absorbed by the ocean.”

But a report in the academic journal Environmental Science and Technology a few years ago suggests that there could be more to this Chinese pollution problem than we realize. It was picked up by The Chemical and Engineering News and highlighted by the Wall Street Journal a little more than two years ago.

First, the report found a way to detect isotopes in the air that are commonly found in the coal-producing regions of eastern China and then it concluded that as much 30 percent of the San Francisco Bay Area’s pollution matches those samples.

There wasn’t much commotion over that report, so its accuracy may be in question. It's a case once again of who do we want to believe?

"I wouldn't trust those numbers to be very accurate," said UC Riverside chemical engineering professor Akua Asa-Awuku, who researches particles found in the air. "Less than 10 percent of China's pollution probably reaches us, depending on if it rains."

Asa-Awuku visited China last year and agrees there is an air pollution problem, similar perhaps to what California experienced 40 years ago.

"The Chinese say it's fog but if that was the case, it would be wet," Asa-Awuku said. "What I saw was dry."

Maybe it’s just me being sensitive to all this because China really is a smudge pot. It burns more than half the world’s coal and all of that is going up in smoke that drifts around the planet. News reports two weeks ago indicated that pollution levels there measured more than 40 times higher than the international recommended average.

So when I hear that members of the Murrieta City Council are exploring possible business and economic links to that country, I hope they keep this in mind. The business they court may seem green to us Americans, but their products may be produced in ways that contribute to world pollution. Those are questions that should be asked.

Because unlike the happiness that comes with another Chinese New Year, breathing dirty air is nothing to celebrate.